Genre: Mystery
Trade Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9781948051231
Red Adept Publishing
288 Pages
$13.99; $7.99 Amazon
November 15, 2018
✮✮✮
Blake Harper doesn't need any more excitement, especially the kind that comes with murder. She only wants to run her business and focus on her love life. But on the night of Mystery Cup Café's big Halloween bash, she sees a clown stab a masked man in the chest.
Blake calls her sister, the town's lead detective, but when the police arrive, there is no killer...and no body. While everyone blows the whole thing off as a prank, Blake knows the truth. When the clown makes an appearance at her home Halloween party, she realizes the killer may be out to eliminate any witnesses.
Blake must figure out not only who the killer is, but also who first the victim was. Will she be able to solve the murder when she's faced with a town full of people who don't even believe a crime happened? And can she unmask the killer before he stops her once and for all?
✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽
Blake Harper owns Mystery Cup, a coffee shop in a small town in Missouri that's known for being haunted. It's nearing Halloween, and Blake is readying her rooftop for a party, when she uses a pair of binoculars her employee Giselle has, to look around her neighborhood with a birds-eye view. She centers in on an apartment nearby that's above another shop, and sees what appears to be a clown murdering a phantom of the opera. But no one will believe her, and when her sister Kyle - a police officer - checks out the apartment, there's nothing there that points to murder. But Blake knows what she saw, and she's determined to find out who the victim was.
When she manages to get a peek inside the apartment she doesn't find anything suspicious, but she knows someone was killed and is determined to find out who. When a curious conversation reveals something she never considered, Blake finally is able to find out who the victim was - but at the cost of making herself the target of a killer who thinks she knows more than she does. Now she needs to find out who wanted the victim dead and why, and if she doesn't find out soon, it won't matter because she won't be around to tell anyone...
This is the second book in the series and I really wanted to like it as much as the first. Unfortunately, Blake and her family members (Rachel and Kyle) haven't grown up at all; they're still talking like high school girls crushing on boys. There was a lot of "hottie" thrown around, and I expected them to throw their fists in the air and scream 'woot-woot' at any minute. Example: Her sister-in-law Rachel talks about having sex with Blake's brother. That’s just cringe-worthy. I noticed it in the first book and it’s not any funnier now than it was then. I was hoping the author wouldn’t go there again. Also, it’s pretty immature if you think it’s hilarious. Does her brother think this is a fun hobby, too?
I also wondered why she was having a rooftop Halloween party in October. In Missouri the average temperature would be in the 40's, pretty cold at night, so why are they having a party on a rooftop? You can't see a costume if everyone is wearing coats, and if they're not, they'd be spending the majority of their time shivering and moving around trying to stay warm. I'm big on details, and these are the kinds of things I notice. Sorry.
I really, really hate love triangles. You'd think three women would be able not to think about hooking up with some guy 24/7, but aside from talking about the murder (which took second place to the 'hotties'), this is all they talked about - whether Blake should hook up with Seth or Adam. Rachel actually wanted to make a 'visual graph' of the pros and cons of the two men interested in Blake. Seriously? These women have too much time on their hands. They need hobbies. Right now. And everyone is 'hooking up' with someone else; obviously it's a crime to be single in this town. The baristas, shop owners, waitresses - no one was spared from Rachel and Blake giving each other glances or wondering who was seeing whom. Also, two guys fighting over a woman is not hot. It's juvenile, but explains a lot about Rachel and her attitude about men. (Although I do wonder if Sabrina will wind up with one of Blake's cast-offs. Hmmm...I wonder why I thought that at all...)
On top of that, Blake is annoying. She does whatever she wants - including walking into danger - regardless of what the consequences might be. Not only that, she actually tells people she's going to do it, and then when they try to talk her out of it or make her promise not to, she ignores them. She also tells us she's a "strong, independent woman" but then makes rash decisions that put her in situations that make her dependent on someone else having to get her out of them, which belies that statement.
But even with all of this I was determined to finish the book because I knew a mystery was somewhere in between all the talk of who's seeing who and who's hot. Just when I thought it was starting to get interesting, the book completely lost me: The women were at a self-defense class, and Sabrina - the 'evil nemesis' because we must have one, right? - out and out deliberately assaults Blake, and the cops see it and don't do anything. Are you kidding me? They don't need to have Blake's permission to arrest Sabrina. It. Was. Deliberate. They were witnesses. It literally made me angry that this violence was allowed without any repercussions. It's one thing to be in the cross hairs of a killer where there might be violence, but this was an actual assault. The excuse? Blake was nosing around. Seriously?
So not only do we have the extremely unlikable character of Sabrina, she's also allowed to physically assault the protagonist and get away with it. What's in the next book? Sabrina runs over Blake's cat? Sets fire to her house? No, that pretty much ruined it for me. I can't like a book where there's no comeuppance for someone who does something like that. Kyle should have arrested her right there. The fact that Sabrina had no problem attacking Blake right in front of Kyle, and then was surprised that there might be a chance she'd get arrested but didn't...well, that's not only brazen, it shows that she can do whatever she wants with impunity, and I'm not interested at all.
While the killer was revealed and caught, we were given that resolution, which was a good thing, but in it's place the book left us with a mini-cliffhanger - one more thing I dislike in mysteries. Unfortunately, after this - the love triangle, the evil nemesis; purposeful attack on Blake that the cops see and don’t arrest anyone for; so many extra characters to keep track of; puerile behavior by Rachel - I don't care enough to read the next, and for that I am sorry, because the mystery would have been more interesting without all the conflicts going on.
I really, really hate love triangles. You'd think three women would be able not to think about hooking up with some guy 24/7, but aside from talking about the murder (which took second place to the 'hotties'), this is all they talked about - whether Blake should hook up with Seth or Adam. Rachel actually wanted to make a 'visual graph' of the pros and cons of the two men interested in Blake. Seriously? These women have too much time on their hands. They need hobbies. Right now. And everyone is 'hooking up' with someone else; obviously it's a crime to be single in this town. The baristas, shop owners, waitresses - no one was spared from Rachel and Blake giving each other glances or wondering who was seeing whom. Also, two guys fighting over a woman is not hot. It's juvenile, but explains a lot about Rachel and her attitude about men. (Although I do wonder if Sabrina will wind up with one of Blake's cast-offs. Hmmm...I wonder why I thought that at all...)
On top of that, Blake is annoying. She does whatever she wants - including walking into danger - regardless of what the consequences might be. Not only that, she actually tells people she's going to do it, and then when they try to talk her out of it or make her promise not to, she ignores them. She also tells us she's a "strong, independent woman" but then makes rash decisions that put her in situations that make her dependent on someone else having to get her out of them, which belies that statement.
But even with all of this I was determined to finish the book because I knew a mystery was somewhere in between all the talk of who's seeing who and who's hot. Just when I thought it was starting to get interesting, the book completely lost me: The women were at a self-defense class, and Sabrina - the 'evil nemesis' because we must have one, right? - out and out deliberately assaults Blake, and the cops see it and don't do anything. Are you kidding me? They don't need to have Blake's permission to arrest Sabrina. It. Was. Deliberate. They were witnesses. It literally made me angry that this violence was allowed without any repercussions. It's one thing to be in the cross hairs of a killer where there might be violence, but this was an actual assault. The excuse? Blake was nosing around. Seriously?
So not only do we have the extremely unlikable character of Sabrina, she's also allowed to physically assault the protagonist and get away with it. What's in the next book? Sabrina runs over Blake's cat? Sets fire to her house? No, that pretty much ruined it for me. I can't like a book where there's no comeuppance for someone who does something like that. Kyle should have arrested her right there. The fact that Sabrina had no problem attacking Blake right in front of Kyle, and then was surprised that there might be a chance she'd get arrested but didn't...well, that's not only brazen, it shows that she can do whatever she wants with impunity, and I'm not interested at all.
While the killer was revealed and caught, we were given that resolution, which was a good thing, but in it's place the book left us with a mini-cliffhanger - one more thing I dislike in mysteries. Unfortunately, after this - the love triangle, the evil nemesis; purposeful attack on Blake that the cops see and don’t arrest anyone for; so many extra characters to keep track of; puerile behavior by Rachel - I don't care enough to read the next, and for that I am sorry, because the mystery would have been more interesting without all the conflicts going on.
